A person can receive many hundreds of electronic communications each day. The electronic communications can include electronic mail messages, voice mail messages, memoranda, documents, and so on. The communications are typically sent from a sender (e.g., a person, group of persons, or organization) to one or more recipients (e.g., a person, group of persons, or organization). Because of the large number of communications, especially electronic mail messages that a person can receive, it can be very time-consuming for a user to access and process all their communications. Indeed, because of the large number of electronic mail messages, it may be difficult for a user to identify an important electronic mail message that may need prompt attention out of all the electronic mail messages of lesser importance. To help locate messages, some electronic mail systems allow a person to specify the order in which electronic mail messages are displayed. For example, a person can specify to order electronic mail messages based on time of delivery, sender, subject, and so on.
These techniques for ordering electronic mail messages and other communications do not, however, provide much useful insight into the importance of communications. For example, if an employee wants to view electronic mail messages sent from their supervisor as soon as possible, the employee may need to order the inbox based on sender and then review the list of messages to see if any were sent by the supervisor. It would be desirable to provide a technique that would allow for communications to be automatically prioritized so a person can focus their attention on communications that are important before focusing their attention on communications of lesser importance.